CEO financial statement is misleading

Hi All,

Currently looking at the CEO balance sheet it is impossible to tell why CEO is losing money or it is actually making it.

The biggest problem is that CEO information doesn't show how much CEO owned corporations are paying in taxes, and only present the profit before taxes which is misleading all players who think that this is the amount CEO is making net.

Just look at the below.


All this information is available at corporation level:



Also it is not possible to understand how Enterprise tax is being calculated and there is no description in the documentation about it. This tax fluctuates and not having information about paid taxes and net profit it is not possible to understand if CEO is making money or not.



It means that I don't know how much I am making net after the taxes and I need to pay insane amount as Enterprise tax without even knowing what is the amount tax is calculated from. I have no clue if after paying the Enterprise tax my CEO is still profitable.


My CEO is the biggest CEO in Simcountry, so if I have no clue about my finances with all my experience in this game, then all new players are probably making losses when thinking about profit and then they bankrupt without any clue why.

The enterprise tax is the taxes your corporations are paying to the countries. Just subtract total profit from the enterprise tax and you will know if you are making money or not. The reason it fluctuates is because the tax is a percentage of your profit, and profit is variable. Also the percentage is determined by the countries.

The reason why you don't see the taxes line at the bottom with everything else is because there is no tax line on the individual corporation pages either. The one you are seeing on the CEO is just combining all the equivalent lines on the individual corporations. On the corporation page, taxes paid is shown in the cash flow section, which is where it is also shown on your CEO page.

From your screenshots, your CEO is making 1.4T per game month NET.

Thanks John,

still then why this enterprise tax increases when i increase profit tax? The numbers for me do not match usually. I cannot track the cash flow as i cannot see how much materials corporations are buying.

I try to keep cash at 60B level in all corporations but still i am not able to get the difference earned as net, if you count profit minus enterprise tax.

You know what Mndz, I might be wrong here. I looked at the cash flow page for individual corporations, and the country taxes are deducted there at the corporation level. It seems like this enterprise tax is in addition to country tax. It seems to match what I am paying in country taxes, which is why I suspected they are the same thing. But on closer look, I am wondering now if country taxes being deducted twice? I am going to search the documentation and old forum posts now. Could Andy give some clarity on this?

Ok so from reading the docs, it appears that enterprise tax is a small percentage tax on total assets of the CEO every month. The documentation states that it varies between 0.05% to 0.1%. That does not seem accurate. I checked our two main CEOs (similar amount of asset value) and the charge was around 0.035% for both of us. I checked some of my mid-sized CEOs and the charge was 0.018%. My small CEO had no charge. So it seems like once you get above a certain total assets value, the game starts hitting you with a tax. This tax seems to be in addition to the country taxes and country resources used fees. Brutal.

I think given this information, you want to minimize the total asset value of your CEO. I think a good way to do this would be to increase profit payments to 100% so that the corporation values stay suppressed, and thus you pay less enterprise tax.

Thanks John, all this just confirms what i stated in the first post,- profit shows bruto, taxes are not indicated and on top enterprise tax is deducted. This leaves me in a spot where i run biggest SC CEO and i don't even know if it is profitable.

Besides of that CEO pays triple taxes, as resources used, country taxes and enterprise tax is taken regardless on top. Maybe that was ok in the past when profitability of corporations was way bigger, but it is clearly not ok now.
Having this i don't know how CEO game can be attractive.

I will probably stop building my CEO until Andy explains all this.

I followed your recommendation John, to increase Profit Transfer to 100%, and guess what - Enterprise Tax increased as well..

Does that mean that part of the profit I take from corporations is added to this tax, why?? Instead I could just transfer the raw cash from corporations directly. Why using Profit Transfer - standard game functionality is punished with the additional tax?

As this tax is taken from the cash my CEO has, then it means that I am being charged twice - firstly when I get the enterprise tax based on the profit corporations make and then additionally when I try to increase profit share with the CEO.

All this is clearly something W3C has to explain and update documentation accordingly.



Andy, - we expect your reaction and guidance on this.

I would like to encourage other players to put more effort into CEO game, encourage them to have all possible 4 CEO accounts, but how to do that when we cannot understand and explain an activity in a single account.

I have noticed my enterprise tax increase too when I set profit transfer to 100%. I usually ran it at 0%. I assumed from the documentation that this enterprise tax is based on Total Asset value, which is why I thought the 100% transfer would work because it results in significantly lower total asset value. Perhaps the tax is calculated some other way? I am going to leave mine at 100% for a few more game months and observe what happens. I likely will go back to 0% if enterprise tax remains higher.

I will do the same just to notice how this continues.

We need to add the tax paid to the countries and net profit numbers to complete this table.
The resulting profit however, is in the corporations, not paid to the enterprise.

But this table has nothing to do with the enterprise cash.
It is a simple addition of the results of all the corporations in the enterprise with their incomes and costs.
It is intended to show you the performance of the corporations.

Then, there is the cash flow of the enterprises itself as an entity.

These numbers do not include much data from corporations.
They do include profits payments by the corporations to the owner (the enterprise). This is kind of dividend paid by private corporations to the owner.
and cash transfers, both automatic and manual, between the corporations and the enterprise.

There is also a cost for enterprises tax and results of purchase and sales of corporations and other amounts resulting from enterprise business, independent of corporations.

Andy,

can you share more details about Enterprise tax, how it is calculated and why it increases when I simply change the percentage of profit transfer from my corporations? I can get cash from my corporations in two ways, one simply by reducing cash level manually or by setting Profit Transfer so it makes no sense to add a tax based on which way I want to get cash into CEO account.

Maybe this Enterprise Tax was introduced before country resources cost tax and duplicates each other now? I would love to pay more to the presidents of the countries where I have my corporations instead of these money going nowhere.

Yes please more clarity on what exactly is Enterprise Tax.

.

I will look into it.
The data is obviously incomplete.

I hope that more is available and just missing from the page, otherwise more work is needed to compute the missing data.

I will be back here.

Thanks Andy, looking forward to receiving more on this topic.

From what I have read in the past 'Enterprise Tax' is the cost of running the enterprise. It isn't 'paid' to anyone, rather it is the upkeep cost, of administering so many corporations.

It scales with the size of the enterprise (number of corporations it controls) as well as other factors.

As I understand it, the main purpose of it, is to function as a 'Soft Cap' on the size of an Enterprise.
Because Enterprises can use the share market to increase the number of Corps under their control without limit.
The 'Enterprise Tax' is increased as they gain more Corporations, to prevent one player from owning the whole planet.

It is similar to the 'General Cost of Government' cost for countries. Which scales with the size of an empire, to prevent one player from blobbing the whole planet.

The tax is paid to the owner.

You may refer to the revenue contribution which is paid for the use of country resources and is paid to the country where the corporation resides.
This payment makes it attractive for countries to allow non state corporations.

Andy, can you clarify how enterprise tax is calculated. Is it needed at all? Many people are closing their CEOs because they lost any hope that CEOs can be profitable due to all the taxes.

John has been closing his 2nd biggest ceo in fb, and he is best player in this game. It is really hard to play them and be motivated when, a single country with 200 corporations can be way more profitable than ceo with 4000 is it ok?

I have to agree with Mndz. The enterprise tax is essentially triple dipping. First you have country resources used. Then country taxes. Then you pay this magical tax called Enterprise Tax that goes to no one. I'm not really sure what the purpose of it is. Is it a way to remove money from the game to control inflation? If these taxes were paid to the countries I wouldn't have as much of an issue with it as it would even out in the end. The way it is now just seems excessive.

We'll be adding paid tax and net profit to the "Corporation Data" table soon.

As for the tax calculations. I've asked an engineer to dig up the exact mechanics and I'll be back when I have an answer

Thanks so much for looking into this.

Hi Jonni and Andy,

Have you been able to get understanding of the mechanics of this tax calculations?

Can you consider removing Enterprise tax and increasing Country Resources Used Tax instead to compensate? This would give more money to countries where CEO corporations are located, but CEO situation would not change.

I strongly encourage you to think about it, I see many people in the forums actively looking for CEOs to build corporations in their countries and benefit for from it.

We will add the missing data.
It did not make it into the last upgrade.
It will be added to the next one.

Thanks Andy, I think this will help players to better understand CEO game.

I also hope that you will review the Enterprise tax which is punishing CEO very hard and doesn't help any country.

There was a remaining problem in the code.
will complete it asap and add to a next update.

not the coming update but the one after that.
same, I hope with the feature that allows you to forward game messages by mail.